


The Aftermath Was Really the Beginning

by Crejhov



Series: Faulty Stark Condoms [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Prologue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-11-20 01:36:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11325948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crejhov/pseuds/Crejhov
Summary: Darcy gets saved by a gun-happy man in black.





	The Aftermath Was Really the Beginning

Darcy meets the man who changes her life while the world is ending. The intern had disappeared at the same time she got caught in one of the portals leaving her alone with four armed space elves. Worst intern ever! Closing her eyes and pushing her back into the side of the car she's huddled against, she expects to be shot with the red energy gun. And she hears a series of shots, but they don't sound anything like the science fiction guns that one trigger happy elf had been carrying around.

Peeking her eyes open, she see's a real human man standing a couple feet from her, nudging a dead elf with his boot. He was dressed like some B-level action star from the nineties. Head to toe black and leather and armed to the teeth. It's a lot hotter than it should be in the current situation. 

Pushing herself up, Darcy stood on shaky legs facing the guy. How she comes off as a threat is beyond her reckoning, but he points a big ass gun at her as though she was responding in kind. She throws her hands up, “Don't shoot! I'm American!” Jane was probably right, she should find something new to call out at times like this. 

Maybe it's her words, maybe it's because she's not a space elf with a creepy Jason mask, maybe it's the awesome scarf she found in the bargain bin, but he lowered his big ass gun with his brows drawn together. Darcy wasn't entirely sure if he was angry or confused, he seemed the type to be angry because he was confused. They stand there for a moment, Darcy with her hands up and the man in black with his gun. And then a giant gray monster jumps out from an ally and roars. This is what she's come to expect out of life now. 

“Run!” She shouted over her shoulder because she'd already turned tail.

A series of loud bangs sounded behind her but she didn't stop until she reached the mouth of a long, narrow alley. Terminator 2.0 was unloading his big ass gun into the eyes of the beast as he walked backward. It seemed to be working for the moment as the monster had ducked its head and was pawing at its eyes, but a gun can only hold so many bullets, right? Apparently so, because he threw the gun down and started to run her way. Darcy threw her arm up into the air and started to wave like a maniac. “Over here!”

He spotted her and paused, almost looking like he was about to turn and run in a different direction. He seemed to reach a decision and barreled into the alley with her. Just in time too, because the monster let out an angry roar before thundering away from them and knocking an abandoned milk truck into a deli. Darcy heaved a sigh of relief and turned around to face the mystery man only to yelp when she instead finds the barrel of a gun pointed between her eyes. 

She couldn't take her eyes off of it, afraid that if she did it would go off. “I – I thought we talked about this?” Her voice had taken on a high squeaky quality in her rising panic. “American, remember?”

“Who are you?” The words were gruff and hard.

Darcy chanced a look up at the guy. If the gun in her face wasn't enough of a reason to stay put than those icy blue eyes would certainly have pinned her in place. “Darcy Lewis. Totally not a threat to anyone or anything. Not even a fly.”

He held the threat of instant death a moment longer, letting it sink in that she was on his short list for whatever reason. When he did lower the gun, he didn't holster it. Yeah, like she was going to wait to pull out her nonexistent ninja skills. Darcy took a few steps to the side to make a wide arc as she skirted around him and further into the alley. Trying to keep an eye on Mr. Hair Trigger and a lookout for more space elves and their pet monsters was proving difficult. So far both had pointed death implements at her, but mystery man had shown restraint twice now. 

“If I turn around to look for more things that want to kill us, do you promise not to shoot me in the back of the head?” There's a question she never thought she'd have to ask in earnest.

His lips turned down with a mixture of suspicion and annoyance but didn't indicate on where he currently fell on the murder of an unarmed girl scale.

It had been a long day. First, she had to rescue Erik from the British pokey because the man had lost his damn mind and couldn't keep his pants on in public (there is a time and a place, alright?). Then Jane shows up with Thor in tow and announces that the end of the universe is nigh and only they can stop it. Her brilliant idea to hire an intern completely backfired, creepy elves in masks had tried to kill her, there was a monster running around and probably eating people. Her threshold for shit had been reached and this guy was pushing his luck with his bad attitude, guns be damned.

Hands fisted and resting on her hips, she fixed this guy with her best imitation of her Nana's steely-eyed glare. The same glare that had kept Darcy's toes in line and confessing all her sins. “Now you listen here! I mean you no harm. If you didn't have such a bad attitude I would have given you one hell of a life-affirming kiss for saving me because that's what people are supposed to do when aliens try to kill them and they get saved by totally hot strangers!” He looked so shocked at her outburst that he had taken a step back and the grip on his gun had caused his knuckles to turn white. He wasn't pointing it at her, so Darcy considered it a win. 

“Do. Not. Shoot. Me.” She stared him down, half thinking he would shoot her anyway until he nodded his assent. Darcy gave him a nod of her own. “Okay, then.”

She turned around and marched to the far end of the alley. But before she could reach it, the world around her blinked out of existence and was replaced by a similar one. Darcy was still surrounded by a destroyed London, but her grumpy savior wasn't there with her anymore.

“Darcy?” Jane shouted from behind her.

Spinning around, she saw Jane and Erik standing about ten feet away. “Jane?”

“Ian!” Erik called pointing to the right, where the intern was climbing over rubble toward them.

When he heard his name, he looked up and waved a hand, “Selvig!” He called, before tripping over what might have been the head of a statue. 

And just to complete their bastardized Rocky Horror Picture Show scene, Thor's hammer flew between her and Jane. “Mew Mew!”

The next time she saw her mystery man was six days later. The space elves were dead and gone, the universe was still intact for the most part, Thor had announced that now that the nine realms were at rest, he could spend more time on Midgard. A day after, Tony Stark sent a gift basket full of his newly branded condoms and a crude drawing of Jane and Thor with three little lightning babies electrocuting the haggard couple. 

Erik, still euphoric from his battle high (or maybe it was because he was off his meds), had commented that it was a lovely gesture and reminded Jane to send a thank you card. Thor agreed that it was a nice thought, but that Asgardians had long perfected male contraceptives. Jane was ready to teleport the billionaire to Helheim and shoved the big box with Stark's smug face on it in Darcy's arms before she could make her getaway. When she got back to her tiny room at the inn down the street, she tossed the package Stark face down on the nightstand and forgot about them before going to sleep.

It was a complete coincidence, serendipity even, that she just so happened to look out of her window at that exact instance and see her sour-puss of a hero climbing the drainpipe of the building opposite her. For what seemed like a solid minute, she just stood there in stupefied shock with her mouth hanging open and staring at the crazy man. And then her brain rebooted and she hurled herself to the window and threw it open.

“What the hell are you doing?!” The sun hadn't even risen yet so she kept her voice to a whispered shout out of courtesy for her fellow travelers who were fortunate enough to sleep in. Also, she didn't want anyone to associate her with this joker who thought he was Batman.

Her loud whisper seemed to jolt him all the same and he swung one arm around with a pistol in it. Darcy yelped and ducked below the windowsill. “I thought we talked about this!” Was it going to be like this every time they crossed paths? 

No gunshots ringing through the predawn was a good sign that maybe he wasn't going to shoot her, in fact, the only thing she could hear was a curious creaking sound coming from outside. Praying to her patron goddess, Sif, she peeked her head up and over the sill until she could see the hot crazy man. He had put the gun away and had braced himself against the building. It almost looked like he was getting ready to jump. Oh God, the crazy person was going to jump. The way his eyes focused on her let her know exactly where he planned on landing. 

“Hey, wait – “ She shot up in alarm, but it was too late because he had already pushed off from the wall. He actually jumped!

There had to be at least twenty-five feet between them. Not knowing what else to do, she leaned out the window as far as she dared with her hand held out. Perhaps if this man were normal (Darcy was giving serious consideration to the theory that he had been bitten by a radioactive monkey), he may have been able to just reach her hand and latch on only to pull them both down to their deaths. But he so clearly wasn't a normal man, and so when he grabbed her hand, he followed it up with latching on to her window before rolling in and tackling her to the ground. 

Darcy didn't have time to work up a proper panic at being pinned to the floor by a crazy man who really needed to lay off the second helpings because he had scrambled off of her and back to the window just as quickly. Darcy did the same but kept a solid four feet between them in case he got any more bright ideas about lunging in her direction. She studiously ignored the part of her brain telling her that it wouldn't do much good. 

“Are you crazy!” She was back to her whispered shout. “You could have died!”

He was ignoring her. The bastard was ignoring her after all the shit he had put her through. Instead, he had closed the window and had pressed himself up against the wall to peer out. 

“Are you listening? I'm talking to you!” She had dropped the pretense of a whisper. A bad decision because with his ninja reflexes, he reached out and pulled her into his chest, one arm around her stomach and the other covering her mouth. 

Darcy reached up with both hands in a futile effort to remove the gloved hand from pressing against her mouth. She tried to stomp on his toes, but he was wearing steel-toed boots so the only one who got hurt was her. Her moan of pain must have been inconvenient for him because he hissed a shushing noise in her ear.

Rolling her eyes, because this is what she gets for opening the damn window and not just turning away like she should have, she leaned over on her tiptoes to get a look out the window too. A group of four men who were also dressed in black and looked to be just as loaded down with guns as the guy who had maybe just kidnapped her stood on the sidewalk below. Their movements were angry and hurried before they split up in groups of two and headed in opposite directions. There probably went her chance of a rescue. 

She wiggled in his arms and he released her. Turning around, she saw he was doing much the same as her, wearily taking stock of the other person. When he made no move toward violence or escape, Darcy decided it was up to her to take the bull by the horns so to speak. 

“Who were those guys? Why were they after you?” 

Nothing. Not even so much as a facial twitch. He had a hell of a poker face, she'd give him that.

“Alright. If I were to scream and they came running they would....” She waved her hand, encouraging him to fill in the blank. 

“Kill you.” 

Darcy nodded her head and looked down at her bare feet with the happy yellow polish on the toes. This must be what Jane felt like when she was off gallivanting with Thor. Partially detached from reality and her own mortality. 

“Alright, so they're the bad guys. What about you?” She had a feeling she already knew, but just to be clear she needed to hear him say it.

She had expected a number of emotions to play across his handsome features, including nothing at all. Despair was a surprise. “I'm not good.”

And now he kind of looked like a kicked puppy left out in the rain. “Well, you haven't killed me yet, so you're at least better than them?” Maybe she should have just given him a pat on the back because that sounded pretty awful. 

The look he gave her confirmed it. She, in turn, gave him a winning smile that seemed to lighten his mood minutely. His shoulders were still slumped, exaggerating his inner withdrawal, but one corner of his lips had picked up into what had potential to be a smirk.

He pushed himself off of the wall and invaded her personal bubble in a rush of self-confidence she hadn't seen coming. “I believe I owe you a life-affirming kiss for saving my life.” His rough voice had dropped a few octaves and – oh – her panties just evaporated entirely. “It's what people do.”

Finally! Her hot, muscley action hero had come and at long last, it was her turn to come! “Now you're getting it!” She tucked her fingers into the collar of his leather and yanked him down to her level. He slanted his mouth over hers and with a hand on the small of her back, pressing her into him.


End file.
